My Decluttering Adventure

Back at the end of March, I shared a post that outlined our plan for some serious spring decluttering at the house.

We haven’t revisited it since then, but for those of you who follow me over on Instagram, you might have caught some of our #homefrontdecluttering updates!

So today I want to spin back around and give you some updates on how it went!

What We Did

I really wish I’d kept a better count of what we got rid of, and being the data scientist that I am, I would have loved to pull out some trends and turn them into an infographic. Next time!

Instead, here’s just a few things we can add to the Yay, we did it! category!

Donated fourteen bags of clothes, shoes, purses, and baby gear that didn’t work for us
Got rid of countless piles of paper that thankfully our recycling guys took
Stopped subscriptions on 27 different magazines and catalogs we didn’t realize we were getting, thanks to Catalog Choice
Added more shelves to our pantry cabinets so we could get rid of the piles that accumulate on our kitchen counters
Purged the kitchen of old things in the pantry and fridge and organized them
Donated a surprising amount of unused kitchen countertop appliances
Updated the high value inventory and updated our insurance quotes
Totally reorganized the garage, sorted the tools, got rid of the extra paint and stains that were left here when we bought the house that had dried up
Realized that hanging onto things because someone gave them to us even though we weren’t sure what to do with them was probably not smart
Realized that despite our attempts to be efficient, we still have a lot of sentimental attachments to things
Realized sometimes that makes us keep things we don’t want to keep
And realized that sometimes sentimental things can make great display and art items, even if we don’t want to use them for their intended purposes

What We Didn’t Do

There are a lot of things we didn’t get around to cleaning up, sorting, and organizing. We had an eventful couple of months!

But even so, here’s what we never got around to.

Figuring out how to stop the root causes of all the clutter – we got rid of a lot of magazines and catalogs, but we need a system for curtailing all the other paper that comes into the house {I’m even sentimental about Baby Bean’s daily daycare reports, and those stack up}
Dig through the junk drawers – they’re still full of junk, sadly
Find homes for the stuff that never found a home – there’s still a lot of refugee stuff that needs to be repatriated sitting on various counters
Stop letting projects in progress be an excuse to leave stuff sitting around – so much clutter in my office is made up of things I was going to get done over the weekend!
Stop holding onto things for sentimental reasons – it’s okay to hold onto things that are sentimental, but sometimes, it gets unreasonable. See the comment about Baby Bean’s daily daycare reports. I. Have. Them. All.

Next Steps

We’ve at least got a pretty good system for keeping things cleaned and organized around here, although there’s still some clutter.

I’m probably going to get this going again in summer, probably around the beginning of July. I have two major projects that are wrapping up over the next couple of weeks, so after that, I’m hoping to take some time and just get the house – and my life – back under control again before I have to dive back into things.

I would laugh, but I honestly believe that if you can get the extra stuff out of your life and build good habits, it’s a lot easier to stay ahead of the messes that can pile up and stress and overwhelm you. At least it’s been that way for us!